Enterprises and individuals are increasingly demanding more complex printing solutions. That is, printing features, which use to require a separate professional service, are now being demanded by consumers. Sending print jobs to special facilities can be time consuming and costly for an enterprise. So, consumers are demanding machinery to perform the complex printing jobs on their premises.
In large part, the print industry's responses to these demands have been to provide multiple types of machines to augment an enterprise's printers. The print industry has also sought to alleviate the consumers' demands with special types of media, each media type having its own unique characteristics.
Media that includes adhesive materials typically has to be processed by a special type of adhesively-sensitive machine, whereas media requiring dual-sided imaging requires another special type of printer. As a result, enterprises carry multiple types of printers and machines, each printer or machine type for a specific need of the enterprises.
This situation is costly for an enterprise and causes support issues because when one type of printer or machine breaks down or fails, the failed printer or machine cannot be swapped out with another type of printer or machine that remains operational.
In addition, in some enterprises application of adhesive material or activation of adhesive material is a manual process. That is, a person is tasked with applying or activating the adhesive material on print media following print jobs in what amounts to a costly and labor-intensive task.